


when the world comes down

by gossamernotes



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, lots of swearing, sibling feels for days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamernotes/pseuds/gossamernotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca Barnes has received two condolence letters about her older brother in her lifetime.</p><p>Both letters, she comes to find, were wrong. </p><p>[The story wherein Rebecca Barnes escapes her assisted living community to reunite with Bucky and Steve after seeing them on TV a year after D.C. and they all come together and fall apart in ways they'd never expected.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. when the world comes down

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have a thing for "big brother" Bucky and really wanted to explore what it would be like if Rebecca was still around. 
> 
> This is my fifth story -- because I have no life -- so **please** let me know what you think about the story in the comments below!
> 
> Enjoy!

Rebecca Barnes has received two condolence letters for her brother, Bucky, during her lifetime.

Both letters, she has learned, were wrong. 

She remembers the moment her father pried the first letter from her mother’s clutched hands as she wailed, leaning against the paint-chipped hall by the front door. Rebecca had only been eight years old then, hair plaited with hand-me-down ribbons, but her heart sank as she watched her mother fall to pieces.

And she knew that the letter must have had something to do with Bucky when she saw her father’s jaw trembled before storming out the apartment, the forgotten letter trailing behind him in the wind. 

It was years later, once she was older and had children of her own, that she realized why her father hadn’t wanted her to see him crying that day. 

But that first letter was a mistake; Rebecca remembers the slack-jawed look her parents had when they opened their door to find two men in uniforms standing outside at attention with apologies spilling from their lips. The letter, they told them, had been sent through postal before the 107th company had been saved by none other than Captain America himself.

(And if that was the reason her father started selling bonds like the Captain used to or why Rebecca saved money for weeks to afford a tattered poster of the icon himself, she never admitted it to anyone)

By the time the second letter came in the mail, Rebecca’s father was too busy boozing his nights away to even show up sober to the funeral -- and once the empty casket was buried in a plot by the cemetery across town -- her mother changed the locks and swore so viciously at her father that Rebecca wondered where her mother had even _learned_ those words. 

Rebecca was just eleven years old when she finally, properly kissed her brother’s tombstone goodbye, and life went on. 

The war eventually ended. She kissed Jacob Street behind the playground on her fifteenth birthday and felt a thrill when he brought his hand up to her cheek and whispered that he loved her. High school rolled around, and she dropped out during her senior year to marry Jimmy Proctor. A funeral was held for her mother a few years later when Rebecca was twenty-one and five months pregnant with her first child. 

Rebecca spent her life watching the world change around her until she wakes up one morning and thinks about her life.

It is 2014, and in one month, Rebecca will turn eighty-one. Living in an assisted care complex, partly because Jimmy passed away years ago from a bad ticker and that her children insist on living in Minnesota for some reason, Rebecca spends her days gardening or going through her things after a few games of snooker with her friends, Dolly and Beatrice. 

There is a particular box that she keeps her valuables in, and it’s small -- barely big enough to hold a handful of coins -- but the treasures stored underneath the lid make Rebecca snort with nostalgia. 

She has letters saved from Jacob and Jimmy, and even still, their sweet words and smooth lines make her cheeks flush as she thinks back on the days when her skin was smooth and her smile could bring boys to their knees. 

Tucked away in a worn velvet drawstring purse is her mother’s old jewelry -- just a pair of tarnished silver earrings and her wedding band -- but the weight feels solid in Rebecca’s palm as she curls her fingers around the bag. She would sometimes wear her mother’s earrings when she felt like dressing up or nostalgic enough to need some part of her mother with her, but the ring never left the bag. 

Rebecca was not one to tempt fate, and while she loved her father dearly, that wedding band had only brought bad luck to her mother from the day she first said, “I do.”

There are other tokens shuffling around the bottom of the box -- Coney Island ticket tokens from random street vendors, some woven bracelets a friend had given her for her ninth birthday, and even a pair of hair curlers that Rebecca swore by in middle school -- but none were as important as the folded envelope tucked into the bottom of the box. 

Pulling the yellowed paper loose, Rebecca opens the envelope carefully -- she’s always so scared the aged thing will just turn to dust under her light fingers and leave her with nothing but ashes -- and traces her Bucky's strong jawline as he stares back at her from the picture.

Bucky had never been one to take pictures, even when their family could afford to get them taken. She remembers the day this was taken because it was just the two of them together since their parents were on a date and Steve was too sick to come along. Rebecca had just turned six -- but even more important, she had just started learning how to read -- so Bucky took her to the public library five blocks down to help her find a good book to read. 

There was a fair happening on the same block as the library, and after she’d sat Bucky down and read him a story about a witty kid solving crimes before bedtime, the two of them walked around the tents and took in all the booths. It wasn’t until they reached the end of the fair that an older lady had approached them and offered to take a quick picture of the two of them for no charge.

Bucky had reared back, ready to run away from the blasted thing, but Rebecca had tugged on his arms and bit at her bottom lip and batted her eyelashes like her mother did when she was trying to get father to oil the front door hinges. And Bucky had caved with a wet pout and short nod.

Looking at the photo now, Rebecca is grateful for that lady who offered to take their picture. It is the only picture she has of her brother before he became Bucky Barnes, best friend to Captain America, sniper of the Howling Commados, and war hero who gave his life for God and country. 

Because the sweat-slicked hair, pouty lips, wide eyes, and gangly limbs that Rebecca sees in this photo don’t look a thing like the dashing pictures she’s seen of her brother that are plastered across museums and textbooks across the country. This, she thinks as she looks at the picture, is her Bucky -- the one that the media or public can’t have. And so she keeps it close to her heart and pulls it out every night, tracing the outline of her brother just as she remembers him in her memory, before tucking her box of treasures away. 

At eighty, Rebecca wakes up each morning fully expecting to either have passed away in her sleep -- praying that she has done enough good during her life to meet her Creator -- or to have to pluck the curlers from her wispy, white hair and turn on the morning news. Despite how the world has changed, Rebecca likes to keep up with what’s happening these days. 

What she doesn’t expect one morning is to wake up and see her brother staring at her through the screen, sitting behind a long conference table with a leather jacket slung across his shoulders, answering questions alongside Steve Rogers about the fiasco in D.C. last year. 

The strangled gasp that squeezes through her lips is enough to grab a nurses’ attention from the outside hall, and distantly, Rebecca wonders if she is having a stroke -- a final hallucination of her past -- before kicking the bucket. 

The nurse stands in front of the TV to grab her attention. 

“Ms. Barnes, you need to calm down. Are you okay?”

Rebecca nods slowly, straining to hear the TV without her hearing aids, but she gets the gist of the story once she asks the nurse to turn up the volume. 

Steve is bigger than she ever remembers him being when she was a kid -- she had almost been as tall as him at _eight_ and he was in his _twenties_ \-- but Bucky looks bigger too. His body language is coiled tightly, as if he’s ready to strike out at anybody who comes too close to him, but it’s his eyes that make Rebecca’s heart sink to her gut. 

Because Bucky -- her big brother who helped her learn how to read and gave her piggyback rides to the park and snuck her ice cream on her birthday -- has a look in his eyes that Rebecca has only seen years ago during her time at a VA in the seventies after Vietnam. The soldiers she had seen with those eyes were wrapped away so tightly within their splintered minds that not even drugs or therapy could help them. 

Most of them eventually wound up with bullet between their teeth or stitches up their wrists. 

And, with that, Rebecca begins making a plan over breakfast -- a bowl of oatmeal with banana slices and a glass of milk -- because she knows what she has to do.

Rebecca hasn’t been back to New York since she gave birth to her daughter, but it looks like home is calling her back once again.  
_______

Technically speaking, Rebecca is free to leave the assisted care center on her own. She’s not sick, her power of medical attorney is still signed in her name, and she even has a car parked in the lot outside for her weekly grocery runs and trips to the old cinema downtown. 

But she knows the moment she tells the staff that she’s heading for New York to see her long-dead-but-really-alive brother who hasn’t aged in over seventy years, they will force her into lockdown because she’s _finally_ lost her damn mind. 

(Which is really what most of them except because apparently the Barnes family attracts suspicion and exasperation -- and while Bucky really had the worst time of that reputation -- it has started to haunt Rebecca in her golden years)

Two days after the conference on TV, and once she has booked the train tickets and studied a map of the city and called to tell her children she is off to see an old friend -- which they really shouldn’t have believed so easily because all of her friends are either at the center or dead -- Rebecca rolls her small suitcase out of her room before sunrise and takes a steady breath. 

Hours later, feeling her knees ache and her lungs rattle because she might be alive but she is still old, Rebecca finds herself on an express train from Maryland to New York with a pinched expression on her face. 

Beyond getting there, she has no plans. Like Bucky, she was never one for foresight, but there is something spurring her on in her bones that makes Rebecca believe that she is doing the right thing. She had always regretted not coming forth when it was made public that Captain America -- the real deal by the name of Steve Rogers -- had been found alive, but she hadn’t wanted to make a fuss. 

(And, if she is being honest, reopening that part of her life would have rubbed salt on old wounds for both her and Steve because she knows that of all the people to ever walk this earth, they had loved Bucky most of all -- and reuniting without him was unimaginable -- so she kept quiet in Maryland and prayed every night that Steve and the Lord might forgive her for her selfishness)

The train rolls into Manhattan by lunch, and Rebecca finds herself struck by the busy street traffic of the city laid in front of her. She’s not even in the heart of Manhattan where cars rule the road and lights shine bright and street performers crowd the sidewalks, but even still, it’s been a long time since she felt the thick, familiar air of New York curl into her lungs. And, though it does make her cough, it also makes her smile. 

This, Rebecca knows, is _home_. 

She grabs a cab, driven by a lovely man named Amann who likes curried chicken and seems to swear fluently in six different languages, and finds herself standing in front of the Stark Tower after forking over the cab fare. 

The building is nearly finished with renovations from the whole alien attack -- save for the giant “A” still hanging from the top of the tower, but she assumes that must the last part scheduled to be fixed -- and she stands straighter before walking into the lobby. Security guards are manning every door, indiscreetly tracking the movements of anyone who crosses their paths, and Rebecca has to take a stumbling step backwards when a busy-bodied intern in a suit comes zipping past her with coffees in one hand and a robot in the other. 

The urge she gets to turn out of the lobby and head back home is almost enough to make her lips tremble -- but she has come here for a reason, and damn it if Bucky isn’t the only Barnes with a stubborn streak. So Rebecca heads to the front desk and waits for the man behind the desk to notice her standing there. He does after a moment, and with a small smile, he asks her what he can do for her.

Shifting on her feet, Rebecca lets out a long breath. 

“Well, this might sound crazy coming from an old lady like myself, but my name is Rebecca Barnes. I just saw James on the morning news the other day, and seeing as he’s my older brother and that I thought it was dead, I figured I might come and see how he’s doing.”

The man stills, obviously not having expected Rebecca’s story, before clearing his throat. 

“M’am, I am sure you’re just a little confused-”

“Son, just don’t,” Rebecca interrupts, growing impatient because she has come so far and waited so long and refuses to be turned away now, and she hands him some paperwork she brought -- her ID, birth certificate, family history -- to prove a point. 

The man looks over it shortly before making a phone call and waving a security guard over. 

“Agent Hill will meet you in the next room for a screening, Ms. Barnes. Please follow me.” Rebecca nods, feeling her stomach turn as she follows the hulking security guard through a door and down a few hallways before being left in a room by herself. 

She doesn’t have to wait long until a tall, lean woman walks in -- announced before she even entered the room from the clicking of her heels -- and introduces herself as Maria Hill, head of security for Stark Industries. Rebecca might have felt nervous if she wasn’t itching with excitement, and she firmly shakes Maria’s hand. 

Maria sits across from her and keeps quiet before breaking the silence. “Ms. Barnes, you must understand why we have some reservations about who you claim to be.”

Rebecca nods. “You’d be bad at your job if you didn’t.”

Something resembling a smile might have flickered on Maria’s face before she starts her questioning -- and, _honestly_ , Rebecca is impressed with how thorough the questions are -- before she’s Maria is convinced that Rebecca really is Bucky’s sister. 

Maria is quiet after her questioning, fiddling with her phone, and Rebecca breathes to calm her throbbing heart. 

“Rebecca, before we bring you up to the private quarters, there are some things you should know about your brother,” Maria finally says after the passing minutes, and Rebecca nods. 

“I figured that would be the case,” Rebecca admits, and honestly, this is the part of the day that she was dreading the most. From the press conference, she knows that Bucky was, in fact, the spy known as the Winter Soldier and had more to do with the helicarrier catastrophe than anyone previously had thought. But, beyond that, Rebecca refused to read any of the leaked SHIELD files or drag through online forums dedicated to discussing the legacy of Bucky Barnes. 

Maria looks tense, and honestly, Rebecca worries that she might age prematurely -- but given her line of work -- it is pretty much inevitable. 

“I don’t want to cross any boundaries or tell you anything you would rather hear firsthand from Bucky, but-”

“Then don’t.”

“Ms. Barnes-”

Rebecca shakes her head. “Don’t tell me anything that you think I should hear from Bucky. He’s still my brother, Agent Hill. Thinking on it now, there is nothing -- _nothing_ \-- that he could do that would make me love him any less. And I want him to be the one who decides what I know and don’t know about his past.”

Maria looks like she wants to argue the point, but Rebecca has been told that her fixed stare is enough to make even the toughest of men squirm in their seat, so Maria just stands up and waves for Rebecca to follow her. 

“The two of them are in the building and have just finished with a team training session. The rest of the Avengers are in as well, but they have been told to avoid Steve’s floor for the time being. I assumed you would appreciate the privacy,” Maria explains as she reaches an elevator, placing her palm on a control panel to open the door, and Rebecca’s chest tightens. 

Clearing the lump in her throat, Rebecca laughs shakily. “Sorry for the question, but humor an old lady. Do I look decent? I’ve not seen Bucky since I was eight; I want to make sure I look nice for this.” Maria finally cracks a smile and nods.

“You look beautiful.”

Once the elevator doors open, Maria leads Rebecca into a spacious living room and tells her to wait there because Steve and Bucky need to be warned about their guest, and suddenly, Rebecca feels like she can’t get enough air in her lungs because this is _really_ happening. 

She is only left alone for a few minutes before Maria returns, her expression guarded. 

“I’ve told them to expect a guest. Steve will be coming in first for both Bucky’s and your safety. We don’t want anything to trigger him-”

“Or give me a heart attack, right?” Maria nods, and Rebecca stands from her seat on the couch because that’s a fair enough reason. When Maria leaves -- promising to leave Rebecca to her boys -- she keeps standing, rolling on her heels because she feels like she is about to buzz right out of her skin. 

It is the clicking of the front door that jerks Rebecca from her thoughts, and suddenly, she wishes she could hide under the couch like she did when she was little when she thought she was about to be found up after her bedtime, but she doesn’t have time to think about much of anything else because Steve is there, staring at her likes she’s a ghost. 

He looks every inch the same as he did on the USO posters plastered around Brooklyn during the war effort, and Rebecca clasps her wrinkled hands together because time has not been nearly as kind to her as it has been to Steve, but Steve’s gruff voice keeps her from looking away from his tanned skin and bright smile. 

“Becca?”

Her name leaves Steve’s throat in a strangled whisper, and Rebecca can only nod before rushing towards him -- tears gathering at the corner of her eyes -- and Steve meets her halfway because she just doesn’t move quite as fast as she used to. He is careful when he wraps his arms around her, aware that his strength has hurt far bigger people, but Rebecca doesn’t mind because he even smells the same as he did when he was a scrawny alley brat spoiling for a fight and sticking up for the underdogs everywhere when he was one himself.

“...god, Becca, look at _you_. I didn’t know you were still alive. I didn’t look because everyone else was dead but Peggy, and _oh god_ , Becca, you’re here,” Steve mutters into the crook of her neck, and she rubs circles into the valley between his shoulders. 

She nods. “Still kicking, Steve, and I’m only eighty, you hear. Stop treating me like I am old or something, alright? You’re older than I am,” she jokes, because what else can she do in this situation, and Steve squeezes her for a moment before stepping back. 

They stare at each other for a few moments, and Rebecca is seriously wondering if maybe she did really have a stroke that morning and this is her heaven, but Steve is as real now as he stands in front of her as he was in the 40s. 

“Becca, you do know-”

“I heard about Bucky,” Rebecca answers, and Steve flinches. 

Taking a step closer, Steve hunches his shoulders. “I am so sorry, Becca, I didn’t know. I would have done something if I-”

Rebecca raises a hand to stop Steve’s rambling words.

“Don’t blame yourself, Steve. There is nothing that can be done about the past now,” she answers because she has learned over her life that the past can’t be changed -- and while it may be uncomfortable or damn right difficult -- the best thing anyone can do in life is keep moving forward. 

Steve opens his mouth to say something when the front door opens again, and he freezes -- and honest to god -- Rebecca feels like her heart is about to beat right out of her chest. 

“Just wait here,” Steve spits as he backtracks past the corner behind him towards the door, and Rebecca has to sit down because her blood pressure is hitting an all-time high with how fast her heart is beating. She can hear muted voices from down the hall, and the fact that she still recognizes both of their voices after all this time is enough to make her start crying. 

“Rebecca?”

She freezes, hands stilling in her lap, and Rebecca finds that she can’t even bring herself to turn her head because she knows this voice -- it used to sing her to sleep and tell her stories when their parents fought in the living room. 

“Rebecca,” the voice trails, sounding closer than it did before, and Rebecca finally looks up to find herself staring into her big brother’s grey eyes. 

He’s filthy, soaked in sweat from head to toe in his sweats, and his long hair is pulled back by a headband. His jawline -- the one Rebecca has traced for years on paper -- is dotted with dark stubble, but his lips are still as full as they were when he kissed her on the cheek before shipping out for Europe.

And, then, she is smiling. 

“I’ve missed you, Bucky,” she breathes before bringing a hand to wipe at her eyes, but then Bucky is moving -- quicker than he ever did before -- and pulls her into a hug so tight that she can feel his lungs expanding and heart beating. He is sniffling, and for the first time in her life, Bucky is crying openly in front of her. 

She brings her hands around his back, trailing them along the tense ridges of his spine before hooking them around his neck, stroking the short hairs at his nape. 

Rebecca closes her eyes, enjoying the warmth of her brother’s arm around her. “Shh, Bucky. It’s alright. I’m here, okay? You’re fine,” she breathes -- worried that he might start hyperventilating if he doesn’t calm down -- and she doesn’t miss the irony in how she is now the one comforting him. 

Whether it was Steve or Rebecca, Bucky had always been the best at making people feel better. Today, though, it is him who needs help the most. 

Bucky doesn’t let go of Rebecca for a long time, even though her shoulders start to ache and her mouth is dry, but she doesn’t try and move away from him. She just lets him cling to her until he finally does pull back with red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks. Bringing a hand to his face, she strokes her thumb against his jawline -- finally able to touch the real thing -- and smiles so wide that her face might split into two. 

“Bucky, you need to shave,”

He laughs, eyes crinkling and shoulders shaking, before reaching up and grabbing her hand from his face to hold in his own. His fingers are calloused now -- and Rebecca doesn’t know whether she wants to hear the stories behind the scars littering his palm -- but he’s flesh-and-blood and breathing and she will take what she can get. 

Bucky stares at her gossamer skin, tracing her bruised veins and liver spots with sharp eyes. 

“You’re just as pretty as you were the day I left.”

Rebecca snorts.

“I was _eight_ , Bucky, so I doubt that’s true.”

Bucky shrugs his shoulders, looking at her like he still doesn’t quiet believe she is really here, and that is when Steve walks back into the room with a nervous step and cautious smile. Rebecca shakes her head and pats the cushion beside her. 

“Steve, get your sorry butt over here already. It’s not like I think you still got cooties or something.”

Steve and Bucky laugh at that, and with a long breath, Rebecca starts talking to them because she’s all too certain that they aren’t ready to talk about the war and what happened after. So she opens her purse and hands them pictures -- snapshots of her life as she grew up -- and tells them about Brooklyn and her work as a nurse after getting married and of how colicky her children were after they were born. Steve and Bucky listen like they had never heard somebody speak before, thumbing through photo after photo, and Rebecca points out people or tell stories that leave all three of them laughing loudly and smacking their knees. 

Bucky is the most vocal, asking if Jimmy treated his little sister right and wanting to know how his nieces and nephews -- because, yes, Bucky, you still got some family left in the future -- are doing and how she can stand to live in Maryland of all places. 

And it feels right. It feels familiar. It feels like no time has passed between them as they banter back and forth, and in the middle of telling them a story about the time she found her youngest daughter dying her hair green, she stops. Steve notices immediately, and Rebecca can feel his careful stare looking her up and down to make sure she’s okay. 

Bucky follows soon after, tilting his head towards his sister. “You okay, Rebecca? You need something?”

Rebecca shakes her head because everything she has ever needed is sitting on the couch with her right now -- and while she loves her children desperately -- she hasn’t felt so at home in years as she does now on this couch with Steve and Bucky. 

“No, I’m just thinking about how bad I missed you two idiots, that’s all.”

Bucky blinks and nods, knowing that there isn’t really anything he can do to help Rebecca, and Steve rests a hand on her knee. 

“Well, we’re here now, Becca,” he says, and Rebecca smiles because she knows just how true that is before looking pointedly at Steve’s hand on her leg. 

“Thank you very much, Steve, but I still consider myself to be a married woman. How the times have changed for you to put a hand on a taken dame,” Rebecca laughs, and suddenly, everything is okay again. 

Her boys are back, and without a doubt, Rebecca knows that not even heaven could feel as nice as this.  
_______

She spends the weekend at Stark Tower with Steve and Bucky, swapping stories and catching up. It is only late at night, after dinner has been served -- _and did she really just meet an Asgardian god over fritattas?_ \-- that Bucky or Steve will sit down with her in her guest room while she sips on a glass of red wine and tell her their stories of ice and war and nazis. Steve is the most forthcoming, only hesitating whenever he talks about the train in Austria or fighting Bucky over the Potomac.

Bucky on the other hand is hesitant, either unwilling to relive the memories for himself or to let his sister see into the dark crevices of his past, but Rebecca reminds him every time he gets flustered that its not his past that she cares about -- its his future. And Bucky smiles every time because he likes the sound of having a future that features his best friend and his best sister. 

Rebecca doesn’t have the heart to remind Bucky that she is his _only_ sister but still. She appreciates the thought. 

He does tell her his story in pieces, painfully, as if he is slowly ripping off a band-aid. Rebecca just listens, keeping herself quiet when all she wants to do is hug her brother and shield him from the world outside, but she respects him too much to do that. So she lets him speak about whatever comes to his mind -- even if he’s talking about his love of Russian desserts or how he gets a kick out of beating Clint’s high scores at the shooting range back. It’s nice to hear him talk, and Rebecca thinks she could listen for the rest of her life, which she very well might do and that makes Bucky more upset than she’s ever seen him. 

“Don’t joke about that, Rebecca. It ain’t funny,” he spits after she makes the joke about how he’s probably going to talk her to an early grave. 

It’s not something any of them want to think about; Rebecca gets that Steve and Bucky have dealt with their fair share of death and that they don’t want to add Rebecca to that list. But she is old -- honestly, she is amazed that she’s even lived this long -- and she’s not afraid of dying. 

Rather, she’s afraid of what her death will do to Bucky once she’s gone. 

So she doesn’t talk about it, but she can see the way Bucky tenses when she coughs and how he practically carries her around the park across the street when she wants to get some fresh air. 

Bucky is already scared of losing her, Rebecca knows, and there isn’t a thing she can do about it. Death will come at its own pace, but she hopes that it takes its time for now. 

She still has a few more things to do before she goes.  
_______

Bucky and Steve travel to Maryland -- under what Rebecca _assumes_ is heavy security -- to celebrate her eighty-first birthday a month later. They are the talk of the center, and Rebecca laughs when Dolly first sees Captain America and fans herself because she has always been sweet on Steve after seeing him perform at a USO show once. All the vets in the center salute the pair as they walk Rebecca around, and the two nod back with bewildered glances before paying attention to Rebecca as she talks them through her herb garden. 

Really, she couldn’t care less about what they think of her oregano, but she wants to show them that she keeps busy even when she’s not taking to them on the phone or coming to visit them every weekend. 

James and Sarah, her children -- whose names make both Steve and Bucky balk when they’re first introduced -- have flown in once already to come with Rebecca on one of her visits. Bucky is happy to meet them, asking about their lives and how Rebecca was as a mother and if she ever learned how to bake a decent apple pie, but it’s not quite the same. 

Steve had told her something once about how hard it is to find people with similar shared life experiences, and it is true. Her children don’t share the same history with Bucky or Steve as she does. And, secretly, Rebecca is glad; she doesn’t feel inclined to share her boys even if it is with her own children. 

But even her own life experiences don’t quite match up to those that Bucky and Steve share, she finds.

Bucky is still recovering from his past -- which Rebecca is glad for because he isn’t running from it -- and she likes to think that she has a part in bringing out the old Bucky. But when she watches Bucky from afar, an arm slung around Steve’s shoulders and looking at him like he has hung the moon, Rebecca knows whose really to blame for Bucky’s easy smile.

It’s not the first time that Rebecca is grateful for Steve, but this time around, it is certainly the most she’s ever meant it. 

She’s so grateful, in fact, that she lets Steve have the first slice of her birthday cake -- chocolate cake iced with cream cheese frosting -- and he takes it with a smile. Bucky laughs before taking a slice for himself, smacking his lips with every bite before Rebecca tells him to mind his manners. He just shrugs and sticks a finger into the icing before licking it clean, and if one of her children had done that, she would have rapt them on the hand. 

But it’s Bucky -- and Bucky has _always_ been like this -- so she lets it slide and nibbles at her own slice of cake. 

They talk afterwards, enjoying the sunny weather outside before Rebecca starts feeling tired. And, even though she never says it aloud, Bucky can tell by the way her voices quiets and her eyes flicker shut every so often. He tells Steve to grab the car while he walks her back home, keeping an arm on her elbow like he thinks she might fall over, and Rebecca rests her head on his shoulder even if he’s too tall now for that position to be comfortable. 

She hums under her breath, watching the horizon as the sun sets and the sky wraps into vibrant shades of orange and blue. They keep quiet the whole to her house, stopping once she reaches her front door, and she takes a breath before getting on her tiptoes to brush a kiss on Bucky’s cheek. 

“I love you, Bucky.”

He stares at her, throat bobbing, before leaning down and kissing her on the forehead.

“I love you too, Rebecca.”

And Rebecca has never felt lighter in her whole entire life. 

_______

Rebecca falls asleep a week later after having stayed up late to watch the nightly news and doesn’t wake up the next morning.

At eighty-one, Rebecca Barnes passes away peacefully in her sleep with her hair pinned up in curlers and a smile on her face because Bucky had texted her a picture of him and Steve at Starbucks before she fell asleep. 

Her children clean out her house the next day, and when they find a small box tucked underneath her mattress, they open it up and find a note tucked inside that tells them what to do the things inside. 

The funeral is held in Brooklyn where she’ll be buried a few feet away from her parents, and per her wishes, everyone is told to show up wearing anything except black.

Only one person doesn’t get the memo -- or if he does, he ignores it -- but no one dares to ask him why when he spends the whole service sat in the front row, clutching at a tall, blonde man’s hand with a white-knuckled grip. 

And, once the service is over and the first shovel of dirt is thrown into the grave, both men are gone. 

_______

Bucky was taken off active duty the day he found out about Rebecca’s death -- probably because of the crater he’d left in the wall of Tony’s R&D lab -- and hasn't left his room since her funeral.

The rest of the team keeps a wide berth from Steve’s floor to give him some space, making Steve the only one in the whole tower who could see Bucky, but he mostly keeps to himself in the apartment. 

He is still grieving, and after having lost Peggy as well earlier in the year, Steve figured he would be better prepared to lose another friend from _before_. 

It turns out he was wrong. 

But Steve still lives his life and goes for a run every morning with Sam and attends training sessions with Natasha in the afternoons before meeting up with Bruce to make dinner for the whole team. 

Bucky, however, finds it easier to hide out in his room and play old jazz standards that remind him of smoky bars and pretty dames with red lips. 

Because those are the things that used to distract him, but even those aren’t enough to turn his mind from the painful roiling of his gut. 

It isn’t until three days after Rebecca’s funeral that a knock echoes on his door, and Bucky doesn’t bother to answer because he knows that Steve will come in no matter what he says. 

“Bucky, how you doing?”

And Bucky snorts because that is such a _dumb_ question to ask him right now. 

“How does it look like I’m doing, Steve?”

That shuts Steve up, and while Bucky feels like he should feel bad for snapping at his friend, he is too full of anger and bitterness to make room for remorse. But Steve doesn’t leave, only moving to sit at the edge of the bed before laying down next to Bucky, folding his hands over his stomach and letting out a long breath. 

“What you're doing? She wouldn’t be happy with you about it,” Steve says after a few minutes.

Bucky knows. If Rebecca walked in on him right now, she would smack him upside the face and ask him just what in the hell he thought he was doing. But Rebecca isn’t here because she’s six-feet under in Brooklyn next to his parents and life is just so _goddamn unfair_ to him that it makes him want to _scream_. 

“...hard, Buck, but we have to keep moving on-”

Bucky bristles. “Just who are you giving this speech to, Steve? Me or you? Because don’t think I’ve not heard how you’ve been clocking all those hours at the gym to beat the shit out of some punching bags. I don’t even get why you’re so upset. S’not like she was _your_ sister,” Bucky bites and immediately regrets the dig. 

He may be upset, but Steve’s still Steve, and he’s got no right to make a low blow against his friend. 

Screwing his face up, Bucky rubs at his eyes before turning over. “Look, I’m sorry, Steve. That was fucked up for me to...”

But Bucky trails off once he sees the way that Steve is looking at him with his wide eyes that know Bucky better than he knows himself. He stills as Steve turns towards Bucky and brings his free hand to grip the back of Bucky’s neck to bring him close. There foreheads touch, and Bucky can feel warm breath fanning against his cheek when he hears Steve’s soft voice crack. 

“It’s okay to be sad, Bucky. You don’t have to be so angry.”

And Bucky holds his breath because he is just so tired of feeling. He doesn’t want to feel anything, but the way Steve is looking at him now -- well -- there is only one other person who’s ever looked at him like that before. And that person was Rebecca, and the lump that’s lodged in his throat threatens to choke him, and he’s sobbing into Steve’s neck before he even realizes what he’s doing. 

“...gone, Stevie. She’s _gone_. My baby sister is dead, Steve, _oh god_. No, Steve, _please_...”

And Steve just holds him, stroking his thumb against the nape of Bucky’s neck like Rebecca had done weeks ago and lets Bucky cry. 

Because really? What else could he do?

_______

The days turn into weeks. The weeks roll into months. One month comes with bad weather and the next finds another megalomanic trying to take over New York.

And Bucky eventually finds himself walking the streets of Brooklyn six months after laying his sister to rest, taking in the new steel and polished glass of the city, as he picks up the pieces of his old life. 

Steve had warned him that not much of Brooklyn looked the same. After the Depression, after the wars, after it all, Bucky had figured as much. But as his feet step against the dirtied pavement of Brooklyn, Bucky begins to remember what home used to feel like. 

Both buildings he grew up in have been demolished and replaced with high rises that never seem to end. His old schools are still standing, but with all their renovations and expansions, they hardly look like the same brick-and-mortar buildings he hated as a kid. He passes the cemetery where his family -- all of them now except him -- are buried, but he doesn’t stop for a visit. 

If he does, Bucky is afraid that he might never leave. 

So he keeps walking, eyeing children as they run past him on the street and watching cars speed down the road to their next destination. It’s a busy life here in Brooklyn these days, and Bucky is glad of it. Brooklyn had always been a buzzing place for him as a child, so he’s glad to see that the city has kept its spirit. It might be the only thing that hasn’t quite changed about the city.

That’s what he thinks, however, until he finds himself on a road that feels so familiar that he feels like he’s have deja vu until he figures out why and feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. There about a block ahead is the old public library that he brought Rebecca to years ago. Of all the buildings in this damn city to make it, it had to be this one. 

And Bucky smiles for the first time in what feels like months. 

The rest of the block has changed save for the library, so Bucky just stands there, taking in the sight in front of him before rifling through his pocket to pull out his wallet. 

Unfolding the worn piece of leather, Bucky pushes past some crumpled dollar bills before picking out an old envelope stuck in the back of his wallet. The paper is thick and yellowed with age, and when Sarah had first tried to give it to Bucky at Rebecca’s funeral, he had told her he didn’t want it. 

But she persisted and eventually Steve had taken it from her hand with a thank you that clearly told her to give Bucky some space. However, once he opened the envelope in his room after the funeral, he felt bad for acting the way he had. 

Opening the envelope again, Bucky carefully unfolds the picture inside -- ignoring the letter tucked inside as well that her sister had written for him shortly before she died because it was _too_ soon for him to see her loopy handwriting again -- and he lets his eyes drink in the faded picture. 

Rebecca is young -- not a day over six -- and is nothing but a toothy grin, freckles, and curled hair that makes her rounded chin thinner. Bucky is younger too -- so much younger than he ever recalls being -- and the picture tugs on his heart in a way that knocks the air from his chest. 

Looking down the street, he tightens his grip on the photo and tries to remember every detail, every sound, every face from that day at the fair with his sister. His memory is still shit, but after having talked with Rebecca about their time growing up together, he finds that it is easier to remember little moments like this one he had shared with her. 

He loses track of time, but Bucky eventually decides that he’s been standing on the street long enough -- and with a quick glance at his watch -- he starts heading back home because Tony will just bitch at him again if he is late for yet another team dinner. 

As he walks back, Bucky keeps the picture in his hand. Rubbing a thumb against the thick paper, Bucky feels like laughing because Steve has his compass -- the one with a picture of Peggy tucked inside -- to ground him whenever he feels lost. 

Tilting his neck towards the sky, Bucky wishes that he could fit this picture of him and Rebecca in something to carry around with him, but he’s too selfish for that. 

This picture, it’s the only one he has of himself before he becoming a solider, and its the only one he’s got of Rebecca period. This picture isn’t meant to level a fight or lead a soldier or comfort super soldiers thrown decades into a future where nothing makes sense and everything takes time to get used to. 

No, this picture is for a brother who wants to remember his little sister when his memories fall to the wayside and it becomes harder to breathe underneath the weight of his past and he feels more lost than ever before.

Steve had -- _no_ \-- has Peggy.

And so Bucky has Rebecca.

And as he watches the sun set beyond the horizon of skyscrapers and billboards in the distance, Bucky knows that the picture caught between his fingertips can guide him home just as well as any compass ever could.


	2. the letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the epilogue. Kind of, sort of. I had mentioned this letter at the end of the last chapter and really felt like I should include what it said. Because Rebecca is the kind of girl who wants to be heard. 
> 
> Let me know if this letter brings anymore...well, resolution to the story. Hope you enjoy!

**Epilogue: The Letter**

Bucky,

This is _not_ a condolence. 

I’ve seen enough of those letters for one lifetime, and I never plan to write one myself. But, while I wish it weren’t so, I will die sooner than either of us would like. 

That is, it seems, how life goes. 

I am writing this not to give you my last words, Bucky. My words were never worth much between the two of us, but give your little sister just a moment and pay attention just this once. 

I am so thankful for having gotten to see you again. I’d never imagined that I would ever get to hear your laughter or see your smile, at least, until I had passed away.

What a let-down that would have been? Dying and reaching those pearly white gates that the nuns spoke of at St. Mary’s to find that you weren’t there waiting for me. 

Why, I think I might have said some choice words that would have sent me straight to Lucifer, Bucky!

It is a selfish pleasure, I think. Life has never been fair to the Barnes family, Bucky, and none of us knows that more so than you do. I will not put to ink the secrets you shared with me about your past -- they will follow me to my grave, you see, and don’t you dare get mad at me for dying because it had to happen sometime -- but know that I have prayed for you. 

Now, I know you don’t believe in God, Bucky. Don’t think that you hid that well enough away from me. I don’t blame you. Because even a good Christian woman like myself? Well, let’s just say that I’ve also had my doubts. 

But I have prayed for you long and hard over these past weeks with mother’s old rosary between my fingertips. I hope that brings you some comfort, Bucky. I really do. 

I am sorry for having left you so soon after finding each other again. These hours spent with you -- and yes, even little Steve from down the corner -- have made me feel alive in ways I haven’t known for years. 

I would tell you not to be sad at my passing because the last thing I ever want to do is make you cry. But you’ve always hidden a tender heart tucked beneath your chest, and now more than ever, I know you would like me to stay by your side.

So I will. 

Don’t visit my grave to often -- especially because I know you’ll just get grass stains on your jeans, and even with that fancy washing machine you got, they’ll never come out -- because I am will be with you everyday. 

Now, this envelope has something else inside; I’m sure you’ve seen it. 

I hope you remember that day, Bucky, because it is one of my better memories of us. But, if you don’t, try and remember me reading you detective stories at the public library and of an old lady with too entirely much lipstick who offered to take our picture. 

Remember now? How you tried to run away at the sight of the camera? I had to beg you to stay, Bucky, and I am glad you did. 

This picture is all I had of you after your death. It’s all I had of you before the war. 

And, now, it’s just part of what you have left of me.

I am not quite sure what else to write. There are so many things we have still have to talk about, but this letter is not the place to bring up lost time. We’ve had enough of that, don’t you think? 

So I will seal this letter with a kiss -- mind the lip print at the corner because it _will_ smudge -- and leave you with the only words I want you to remember if you should ever forget anything about our time together, Bucky. 

I love you dearly, Bucky. 

And, while I don’t expect it to be anytime soon, we will see each other again one day.

This letter is not a condolence. It’s not a goodbye either, you hear?

It’s more of a _“see you later, Bucky.”_

Never, ever forget that. 

With all my heart,  
Rebecca Barnes. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow and fangirl with me on [tumblr](http://brooklynboystosupersoldiers.tumblr.com) because I love you all.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any characters, settings, plot lines, concepts, or terminology as created, used, and owned by Marvel Entertainment, LLC ®. This is a work of fanfiction.


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